I am proud to be HIV positive.

Visual Aids Artist

It is as if these two words—proud and positive—don’t belong in the same sentence. And yet there they are, perilously close together. Too close for comfort?
No one should be marked or shamed for living with HIV. But, should someone claim to be proud of being positive, there is a lingering, implicit threat to the statement, as if their pride is untrustworthy, or worse, that having the audacity to feel proud of living with the virus must mean they want to infect everyone else.